Thursday, September 28, 2006

On the way to Wichita

We left Las Vegas as planned on Monday. I had been watching a tire on the trailer and when I stopped to check it about 30 miles up I-15 it looked worse. I think I had a ply fail in the tire so I decided to put on the spare. Only took about 20 minutes and Dianna stayed cool in the truck.

We filled up with diesel in St. George, Utah and headed east. We followed the AZ-UT border and finally stopped for the night in Fredonia, AZ. The next day we continued east through Indian country, through Page, AZ where we crossed the Colorado river, then through four corners and on to the town of Mancos, CO which is near Mesa Verde National Park. We spent the night at a nice RV resort high in the pines. Fortunately, everything is almost shut down and there are very few people travelling in the high country right now.

Yesterday we travelled through Durango, Pagosa Springs and over Wolf Creek Pass. Do I ever love this truck! We pulled up and over the pass at the speed limit (35-45) with the cruise control set and stopped at the top for lunch. We fed a hungry and very friendly bird some crackers. There was still a couple inches of snow on the ground from a storm a week or so ago. Going down the other side of the pass was just as comfortable. I just put the truck in 7th gear and used the jake brake to control the speed. My foot rarely touched the brake pedal. Some different from the white knuckle towing I used to do.

We continued to Del Norte, CO yesterday and decided to stay a couple days. We arrived about 2 PM so had plenty of time to relax. Today we washed some of the bugs from the truck and trailer and took a drive to South Fork, CO, about 17 miles away, to see the property some friends purchased there. It is a very pretty RV development on the banks of the Rio Grande river. We chatted with some of their neighbors since they are in Texas now.

As you can tell, we are taking our time. We have only been traveling 200-300 miles a day and stopping to see things whenever we want. Dianna got tired yesterday as we were driving so we just pulled off the road and took a nap. Nice way to travel.

Tomorrow we will go about 250 miles to somewhere near the Colorado-Kansas border. That will be half way to Wichita, KS where we will go on Saturday. We will be there for a week as we join a rally of owners of converted Class 8 trucks like ours. We expect that there will be over 50 rigs there so it will be a fun time of looking and learning.